U.S. Bank Rolls Out Mobile Photo Bill Pay

The bank announced in December it was partnering with Mitek Systems on the offering, which allows U.S. Bank customers to set up bill payments by snapping a picture of their bills with their camera-enabled smartphone or tablet.

The solution is similar to mobile remote deposit capture. Once the photo is taken the customer is able to verify the payment date and amount on their mobile device before sending the payment request to the bank. Customers can also set up electronic bill payments and recurring bill payments with the service.

Chris Peper, VP of mobile channel management at U.S. Bank, previously told Bank Systems & Technology the service should encourage customers to migrate to digital channels.

"This encourages our customers to go to our digital channels and will help pull our online customers to our mobile services," he has said.

According to the bank, mobile photo bill pay adoption is set to reach 33 percent among adult U.S. consumers by 2018, and result in 1.4 billion bills migrating to the mobile channel,

Bryan Yurcan is associate editor for Bank Systems and Technology. He has worked in various editorial capacities for newspapers and magazines for the past 8 years. After beginning his career as a municipal and courts reporter for daily newspapers in upstate New York, Bryan has ... View Full Bio

This is a great move. I can see it really taking off as it really simplifies the whole bill paying process and fills a gap: paper bills are redundant and many customers probably never even open them anymore; yet not everyone wants to go online to see their bills. This is a clever use of smartphones' cameras. It's great to see retailers as well as banks making innovative use of smartphone features to make customers' lives easier.

Mobile banking and mobile deposit have really taken off. Now banks are adding mobile bill payment, which is really interesting. The challenge now, is what do banks do with their branches? Customer can do more on mobile/web now than ever before and they rarely go to a branch. However, customers say that the proximity of a branch to their home is one of the largest factors in selecting a bank. So, if a bank closes some branches, it risks losing customers. But it costs a lot to maintain and keep branches open, especially if customers may rarely (or never) actually step inside the buildings.